Transcript

SM: Well, my son disowned me. He told his mother that he didn’t want anything to do with the fucking freak. So I don’t get to talk to my grandson or my granddaughter.

KW: My family is similar to yours.

SM: Your daughter disowned you?

KW: Both my daughters disowned me, yeah.

SM: Yeah.

KW: Yeah.

SM: When I was growing up, I always knew there was something different. I didn’t like the same things the other boys did. You know, they wanted to play Army and Cowboys and Indians. And I wanted to be the girl on the wagon that was sewing and making coffee [laughs].

KW: Right.

SM: But you know, I had to be who I wasn’t so that I could survive.

KW: I spent 15 years in the Army and I enlisted, of all places, as a paratrooper going to the 82nd Airborne Division. And the units I was in, the soldiers were pretty hard-charging, so that was the image you had to portray. I didn’t start wearing women’s clothes until I was out of the military. I wouldn’t do it because I was afraid.

SM: Oh in the military, yeah. But then, we met at the transgender support group –

KW:Yeah, the VA support group —

SM: And we started joking and then just like nitpicking at each other, and stuff —

KW: [laughs]

SM: —people said, ‘Well, you guys really are sisters!’ We do sit around and talk a lot. We would sit in Denny’s for coffee at like 2 o’clock in the afternoon and it’d be dark —

KW: And leave there at 10 o’clock at night

SM: —10 o’clock at night.

SM & KW: [laughs]

KW: The servers all know us, the managers know us.

SM: She flirts with all the waitresses.

KW: Me? [laughs]

SM: Yes, you do!

SM & KW: [laughs]

KW: We get twenty percent military discount.

SM: Yes, we do!

KW: [laughs] You know,it hurts to have lost my daughters, but I found out love is not a two-way street, and love is not unconditional.

SM: It is for some of us.

KW: You’re always there for me. There’s never a doubt or question as to whether you would be or not.